New Engineering maintenance pits for Norwood bus garage

At Arriva London, we are always looking at ways of developing better methods of serving our customers and helping our staff to do their jobs more effectively. A most important part of this is to ensure that all our buses are fully serviceable and ready to go out on the route.

Preparing the site

As part of our continuous improvement programme, investment has been made in our engineering facilities right across our seventeen garages. The programme started with the vehicle maintenance pit upgrade in Tottenham and Stamford Hill garages in North London, and has now extended to our garages in the South at Brixton and Norwood.

Off loading the prefabricated pit units

The upgrade has been carried out over several months as it is a major upheaval for the garages while day-to-day operations carry on. The work involves removing the old concrete pits and replacing them with steel pre-fabricated versions. The pits are deeper than the older versions, which were installed when the garages were built over fifty years ago, and were designed for the higher floor, step access buses of the time.

Working round the construction work

Apart from providing more space to work, the new pits are better illuminated and with the steel side walls painted gloss white, give much better reflective surfaces that are also far easier to maintain. They have also been extended to accommodate the increased length of the New Routemasters buses.

The transition has meant that the garages have had to share their servicing work with other Arriva London Engineering facilities.

Ready for use

As Norwood Engineering manager Micky Letts explains: -

The new pits in action

“The transition has run really smoothly and none of the routes served by the garage have been affected by the change. We had a lot of noise and disruption during the pit refurbishment but boy was it worth every minute. The refurbishment has given us a much cleaner and better environment to work in for all staff, and it brings a smile to my face when I arrive for work each morning and walk into the new workshop area.”

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